June 2020 Newsletter

magazine
summer 2020
life after lockdown...

Message from our CEO...
Dear FIG Partners
Most of us are now starting to see a downturn in Covid 19 cases
around the world and I hope that our members, their families
and staff have avoided the worst impact of this deadly virus. Our
businesses have also inevitably suffered from the impact of this
unprecedented event and we must focus on recovering and rebuilding
in the coming weeks and months. Our small team at FIG-
GROUP will be offering our best efforts to help support FIG members
as we prepare to launch some significant initiatives.
Our new FIG website is in final stages of testing and will launch
shortly. The new website is, in fact, a PWA (progressive web app)
which operates just like a native app on your phone or tablet allowing
members to have all information and tools at their fingertips.
We have added a number of features designed to increase
business opportunities and communication which we have highlighted
in this issue.
It is predicted that we will all suffer a major recession in the coming
months. Our aim is to add tools and resources to help our
members compete and build towards a digital future where most
multi-national forwarders are already making advances.
Looking forward to launch in the coming weeks...

Our Interforwarder project, which was due for launch in March,
has been hit hard…
Our team of developers in India working on the final stages of
this project have been a casualty of coronavirus and are no longer
able to support us. Having already paid these developers for a
significant amount of work, we must now re-deploy our own resources
to this project.
A major feature of the Interforwarder platform is the ‘instant
rate’ option which was an integration by subscription via
searates.com and offered map-based routing and tracking options.
Searates have basically stolen our concept and have decided
to establish their own ‘network’ (Membership is $3000/yr if
anyone is interested). We have already sourced a team of mapping
engineers who will build our own version of this feature. The
cost, as you may imagine, is significant and is a painful reminder
that our industry still suffers from unscrupulous operators.
In short, launch of our Interforwarder platform will be delayed by
appx. 3-4 months.

Building the Future...
As we emerge from the ‘lockdown’ culture, most of the world is facing
a huge recession. Only the fittest and best prepared will survive.
FIGGROUP is preparing a brand new PWA (progressive web app) to
replace our current FIG website. The site is in final stages of testing
and we would like to share some exciting new content with you.
New FIG Member’s Dashboard
When users first load the new website, they will be prompted to click for download. On
any mobile device, the FIG pwa site will download an icon to your screen (phone/tablet
etc.). The site will then operate just like a ‘native’ app on the device even when offline.
We have created a FIG Dashboard (see above) for each member with quick and easy
access to all existing tools and quite a few new and innovative tools and resources to
help our members save money, build new business and take a huge step towards the
digital age of freight forwarding.
The following pages will give an insight into some very powerful instruments which will
shortly be available to all members.

At first glance, you will see many of our existing features such as the tools to edit and
maintain contact details. Here are a few new features…
We have introduced a quote/enquiry page where visitors to the FIG website can request
contact or quotations from our members. Members will receive email notifications
every time an enquiry is received. Where the enquiry involves POL and POD,
both FIG Partners will be notified.
Our ‘e-mail centre’ has been improved and simplified. Just send a single message to
reach all FIG Partners at the same time. This simple tool can be used in conjunction
with our ‘noticeboard’ for any important announcements.
Example of a message from
e-mail centre. Just type your
message and press ‘send’.
ABOVE: Each member can
be contacted by site visitors
for ‘chat’ just by clicking the
‘send message’ button
A brand new enhanced messaging system has been introduced. Members can ‘chat’
with each other directly from the website or via the pwa FIG App on their phone or
tablet. Additionally visitors to our website can chat directly with FIG Partners in realtime
to maximise opportunities to connect with new clients. This tool shows local
time for each member to encourage contact within office hours.
We have spent many months building a working relationship with a number of key
service providers to ensure that our members have the best possible resources to
help ‘raise their game’ and take a giant step towards the digital age. Through working
as a co-operative, we have been able to secure a bunch of great tools with which we
can move forward and grow as a FIG ‘family’.
Take a look at the next few pages to see these exciting developments...

WHITE PAPER
The Future of Commerce Payments in a
Digital Society [extract from Gartner Report August 2019]
To remain competitive and optimize customer satisfaction, application leaders responsible for
digital commerce must anticipate the future of consumer payments.
Payment methods in a digital society will be far more ubiquitous and consistent than they are
today. There will be fewer of them and all will demonstrate more global utility. The current fragmented
payments landscape impedes innovation, especially where supported and preferred
payment methods vary greatly from country to country. Fintech companies and other innovators
need to create separate instances or implementations for each unique locale, which increases
the effort per innovation by many magnitudes. The only globally near-ubiquitous payment types
today are the major network branded debit and credit cards, which may be a small proportion of
the digital commerce payments made in any one country.
In order to promote innovation, many countries or regions are encouraging or mandating open
banking and other interoperability initiatives. European PSD2 regulation is indicative of the
trend toward opening previously locked away data and increasing interoperability. Under the
regulation, European banks are mandated to provide APIs that enable access to consumer
bank account data. Banks have previously closely held detailed data regarding their customers’
accounts, spending habits and financial health. Under the new regulation, customers can give
explicit permission to trusted third parties to access their account data. This could be for the
purposes of enabling account aggregation across different banks within a single mobile app, or
facilitating account comparison and switching services, etc. This improved access also enables
payment gateways to offer real-time payments from a customer’s bank as a payment option
within the merchant check-out. As a recent example, the acquirer processor, Adyen, introduced
such functionality — Dutch airline KLM is an early adopter, allowing customers in the U.K. to
pay for flights using real-time bank payments facilitated by open banking APIs.
Similar payment innovation, and more, can be anticipated from the likes of the Unified Payments
Interface (UPI) in India, to the Nets Union initiative in China, as open banking initiatives
create more ubiquity and cohesiveness. 4 This forms a foundation upon which to build new functionality
that can reach more consumers more quickly and is therefore more interesting for technology
companies to invest in.
The future of commerce payments in a digital society will be largely shaped by four key developing
trends observable in the market today. (See Figure 1.) Use this research note to understand
the current trajectory and future impact of these trends and to prepare for the future of
digital payments within your organization.

Recommendations
Application leaders responsible for digital commerce payments should:
Increase conversion rates and customer satisfaction during mobile commerce transactions by
supporting digital wallets, QR codes and NFC technology.
Routinely share with business leaders trends and insights related to changing landscapes in
open banking, interoperability and real-time payment initiatives. This may involve sending routine
trend-related emails, newsletters and/or forwarding articles and insights for their attention.
Explore early adoption of cryptocurrencies for funds movement, especially if your business deals
with significant cross-border transactions, within or outside of commerce.
Mitigate risk of competitive failure by staying current with financial inclusion initiatives with the
populations and geographies you serve.
Mobile Payment and Digital Wallets
Payments in a digital society will be largely conducted via mobile devices. While it is likely that
cash will not disappear completely for 25 years or more, plastic cards are likely to largely disappear
from use within the next 10 years. Consumers will continue to demonstrate a preference for
mobile and wearable devices as the origination point for everything, and payment is no exception.
Mobile payments and digital wallets are experiencing rapid growth, shifting the commerce sales
mix away from traditional card payments.
Open banking and interoperability initiatives are accelerating innovation and creating potential for
disruption.
Real-time payments are largely nascent, but rapid adoption is anticipated and will create a foundation
for digitalization of the customer payment experience.
Cryptocurrency issuance and adoption continue to rise and to explore new use cases involving
funds movement.
FIGGROUP COMMENT:
The ‘Gartner Report’ is an annual report to participants in global commerce.
Although much of the report is directed at ‘business to consumer’
developments, it is clear to see the direction of future payment models.
We have all heard of developments in ‘blockchain’ which in it’s purest
sense uses crypto-currency as a payment device. Although adoption of
blockchain is in progress with many of the ocean carriers (and their alliances),
it is the shipper who will drive the speed of development in this
area.
For now, we can all take ‘a step into the future’ by increasing speed of
transactions, reducing cost of ‘foreign’ currency transactions and making
international payments in a secure environment - all made available in
your new FIG Dashboard (see overleaf).

We are delighted to have built a highly beneficial relationship with Newbridge
FX, a leading provider of FX solutions. Not only will members get
very attractive exchange rates but a whole host of tools including the ability
to ‘hold’ multiple currencies in their account and make ‘same currency’
transactions completely free of charge.
Newbridge FX can offer ‘forward contracts’ allowing FIG Partners to
‘guarantee’ currency prices in quotations.
Speed of transaction is naturally critical when dealing with time-sensitive
shipments. Newbridge FX offers the fastest method of making payment. In
a recent high value transaction from Australia our FIG account received
funds within two minutes of payment and at a rate saving GBP£6000 compared
to bank rates. Some 3.5% cheaper.
• Excellent FX rates
• Extra fast payment delivery
• Forward contracts (fix the rate)
• Hold multiple currencies in your account at no charge
• Make same currency transactions at no charge
CLICK HERE TO OPEN YOUR FREE NEWBRIDGE FX ACCOUNT

Another world-beating product! IMI Cargo is offering FIG Partners a huge 10%
discount from their standard cargo insurance rates with full global coverage.
Rates can be accessed easily online with a printable insurance certificate in
seconds.
We will be adding this product as an option when quoting through our FIG
Marketplace (see next page) and with our Interforwarder platform.
REQUEST YOUR FREE IMI CARGO INSURANCE ACCOUNT
ERP - Inventory Management
For some years, our members have requested that we provide a workable
‘inventory management’ system allowing FIG Partners to connect directly to
their clients SAP/Oracle systems to extend the supply chain from factory to
warehouse and final delivery.
We are delighted to confirm that we are in advanced negotiations to supply
such a system as a saas (software s a service). Members will be able to use
this web-based service and only pay for the service as required.

Life After Lockdown...
Developments at FIG HQ are moving at an unprecedented
pace. Whilst we cannot introduce
all coming features, here is just a flavour…
• New FIG (pwa) website coming in a few
weeks with many new resources...
• Launch of Interforwarder platform (pwa) later
this year…
• Many new tools and resources aimed at enhancing
your FIG membership and encouraging
ever greater co-operation…
• Virtual conference (in development)...
As explained in our introduction, development on our Interforwarder
platform has been hit hard as our developers in India
have ceased trading and one of our contributing partners,
searates.com have been the subject of a take-over and cannot
support this project.
As with any successful project, we will overcome these issues
and emerge stronger as we continue to invest significant resource
into this ground-breaking initiative.
Although we expect a delay of 3 - 4 months to our anticipated
launch, we are already adding some amazing new features
which will bring huge benefits to our FIG Partners - at NO
COST!

After several months of painful restrictions,
we are starting to see the
‘green shoots’ of recovery in the global
economy. However, the coming year will
bring challenges as we start to repair
damage caused by Covid19.
There has never been a more important
time to work with trusted FIG Partners
around the world as we re-build our family
stronger and with an ever-increasing global
reach towards our target this year of
100 (countries) FIG Partners.
Some companies will undoubtedly fail in
the coming year. It is more important than
ever that FIG Admin secure solid, financially
sound FIG Partners to our FIG
‘family’ and to monitor existing members.
Additionally (as you have seen in this publication),
we are continuing to invest in a
solid support structure.

We are delighted to announce a new working relationship with Freightalia where
our members can register completely free to open a Freightalia account.
This account will allow you to store all carrier rates and produce your own ‘instant quotes’
directly from your own branded dashboard. You can even give your clients access to reach
their own instant rates with your pre-determined margin. This amazing tool will allow members
to produce quotes in minutes rather than hours and with multiple user access, your
sales staff can build quotes instantly when visiting clients.
The platform is simple, intuitive and users can be operational in minutes. The site comes in
several languages including English, Polish, Greek, Italian, Chinese,French and Spanish.
Example of Instant Freight Quote Dashboard

FIGGROUP has a great opportunity working with Freightalia to demonstrate that
we are working as a true multi-national organisation and that we have the tools
and resources to compete with any of the major global organisations.
We have taken this tool to another level! Using api’s, we are building a FIGGROUP
marketplace where all FIG Partners will have access to rates provided by other FIG
members all in one place. No need to wait days for a rate request - just access our
FIG Marketplace for all registered rates instantly.
We plan to use Freightalia as a basis for instant quoting on our Interforwarder
platform. FIG Partners rates will always appear above any Interforwarder user in
any rate request.
Each account has a limit of 10 clients (free account) - you can give access to 10 of
your clients if you wish. Additional clients can be added by upgrading to the paid
version.
Freightalia’s intelligent dashboard
and reporting features
ensure you’re always aware of
your company’s sales performance.
Quickly and easily analyze
all quotes generated by the
system with beautiful graphs
and reports filtered by status
(booked and pending), by service
(Air freight, Sea Freight LCL,
Sea Freight FCL), by location
(Airport, Port, Origin, Destination),
by customer, by country,
etc.
REQUEST YOUR FREE FREIGHTALIA ACCOUNT

And finally...
We are delighted to bring you our new FIG (pwa) website with some amazing
features designed to bring even greater opportunities to our FIG Partners. Additionally
when we launch Interforwarder later this year we will easily represent
the best value of any forwarder’s network. We are setting the standard—
others must follow!
• Long-standing—15 years anniversary!
• Exclusive network—one member per country
• Best communication structure of any network
• Best tools—instant rates / best FX & e-wallet / best cargo insurance etc.
• Best conference—we are building a complete ‘virtual conference’
• Best opportunities—more leads and enquiries…
• Best value of any forwarders network!
We are continuing to build our FIG family towards 100 countries/members
this year to increase the global reach of our members. Feel free to recommend
any exceptional forwarders for vacant territories…
We are constantly listening to the views of our members—if you have any
suggestions or require additional tools—just shout!
Finally, a huge ‘thank-you’ for your continued support through these troubled
times. We are here to help—together we are stronger…
FIG Admin

Notes: